Thankful for Dutch Apple Pie

I'm painfully close to finishing my last academic obligation of the quarter, so naturally, I am blogging instead of working on that pesky take-home final. I spent the whole day writing a paper for another class, though, so I when I finished, I felt somewhat justified in taking a short respite... 

That was several hours ago, though.  "A short respite" turned into grocery shopping and watching Glee, but then, I have never been good at self-restraint. Perhaps this explains why Fall quarter was not terribly kind to me in terms of free time for baking... But never fear, things are looking up for the Winter!

In any case, along with all the other aforementioned distractions, I decided to throw together a batch of shortbread cookies tonight. ("Just shortbread? Meh." you say? Don't worry, they are much cooler than that. The instructions called for a cheese grater, so something new and unusual is definitely afoot. More on this in my next blog post.) Then I remembered that I forgot to blog about my Thanksgiving baking adventure. 

I usually make pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving (loyal OCB readers will recall the homemade kobucha version from 2011), but this year I decided to go with something that my brother might actually enjoy. Some time ago, my big bro confessed that he doesn't actually like pumpkin pie... The horror! All these years, he'd been quietly suffering, just to be polite. What a guy. All of that nonsense ended this year, however, as I decided to make... Dutch Apple Pie!

How did I arrive at this decision? Some of you may be surprised to learn that it was not until I became a young adult (in age only, of course. I have yet to reach this status in actual maturity.) that I came to understand the wonder and glory of homemade pies. I have always been a fan of buttery-flakey things, but as a kid, my only exposure was through a fellow Sara... Sara Lee, to be precise. Mom always let me pick the frozen pie we'd bake on holidays, and I always, always, always picked Dutch Apple Pie. There is something about those crispy, crumbly bits on top of spiced apples that just takes me to another place. 

I hope my family enjoyed it. They always say they do, but now that I know my brother has been putting up with pumpkin for so many years, I wonder if I can trust any of them anymore... What do you think? (Apologies in advance for the bad pictures -- they're taken from my phone, since I forgot my real camera in LA.)

The recipe I followed was somewhat piecemeal. My go-to pie crust is, as I am sure you know by now, the Flour Bakery pâte brisée. But the filling and crumble top came from this fairly generic, but universally well-rated recipe on Food.com. One small, but significant modification I made was to blind bake the pie crust before filling it with apples. I've gotten into the habit of blind baking, since I discovered that it prevents the dreaded "soggy bottom crust" syndrome. Interestingly, although I don't have any pictures to prove this, I didn't have enough pie weights, so I ended up weighing down the crust with pebbles Mom bought for the bottom of decorative flower vases. I washed them, of course... They actually held up the edges quite well, so I think I'll keep using this technique until Mom decides to dump them into a vase.

Enough rambling. Here's the recipe, for anyone who may be interested.

Dutch Apple Pie, adapted from Food.com and Flour Bakery

Ingredients

1 Pâte Brisée II, recipe here
5 1/2 cups peeled cored sliced cooking apples
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar, packed
3 tablespoons flour
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

For the topping
3/4 cup flour
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar, packed
1/3 cup butter or 1/3 cup margarine, room temperature

Directions:

Prepare pâte brisée for the pie crust. When you are ready to make the pie, blind bake the crust at 375°F for about 20 minutes, or until golden brown. Allow the crust to cool, and continue with apple pie recipe as follows.

1. Preheat oven to 375°F.
2. Fit pie crust into pie plate.
3. In a large bowl, mix sliced apples, lemon juice, both sugars,flour, cinnamon and nutmeg.
4. Pile into crust.
5. Prepare topping:.
6. In a medium bowl, with a pastry blender or a fork, mix flour, both sugars, and butter until coarsely crumbled.
7. Sprinkle evenly over apples.
8. Bake at 375°F for 50 minutes.